‘G’ is a Go

Posted by Charly Shelton
on May 5th, 2016 and filed under News.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

After several months of discussion, debate, looking at, deciding, re-deciding, more discussing and more maps being drawn up, a district trustee area map has finally been chosen.

At the Glendale Unified School District Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, the much-anticipated vote came up as an action item. Last month, the board was slated to choose one of the seven maps, maps A through G, to convert the district from an at-large electing district, meaning that all five of the GUSD board members were elected by the entire district overall, to a trustee area electing district, where each of five areas throughout the district would elect one seat for the GUSD board. At the last meeting, another map was requested to be drawn up based on Map G. This would include Fremont Elementary in area one, the North Glendale trustee area that comprises all of the Crescenta Valley and the schools that feed into Crescenta Valley High School.

With new Map G2 presented at the meeting on Tuesday, all of the board members were unanimously satisfied with the changes made and it was voted as their official selection, which will then be drawn up as a resolution to adopt this trustee area layout at the next board meeting.

“I was happy with draft G and I know there were some small changes that were requested, so [in light of] the changes that have been made, I’m G2,” said school board member Christine Walters.

Walters’ comments mirrored the comments of the other board members in that there are changes ahead for the school board as new members who are elected by trustee area are appointed and the at-large elected members retire.

“I know we don’t want to get to where we feel like we have individual board members who are representing [select] schools. It’s easy for us to think that way,” Walters said. “But I know further down the road we can’t guarantee … that’s not going to be one of the consequences. So I do like how for the most part [this map] tries to follow attendance boundaries as much as we are able to with other constraints that we have.”

The map will be drawn up as a resolution for the next GUSD board meeting on May 24 before being sent on its way to the California Board of Education for approval and finally filed with the registrar of voters before October. The first three trustee areas up for election will be in April 2017 and the final two trustee areas will be elected in April 2019.

Check CV Weekly next week for more from the GUSD board meeting, including the findings of the school calendar committee and their suggestions in moving forward.